Smoke billows from a building hit by an Israeli air strike in the town of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip.(AFP Photo / Said Khatib) / AFP

As ever, the dominant narrative being presented to us on the current conflict in Gaza is that Israel is defending itself and its civilians against unprovoked aggression by Palestinian terrorists.

And as expected, it is the same narrative being pushed in
Washington and London, like a well-rehearsed play the actors
involved perform their respective roles with the same old aplomb.

It is the same narrative we have been subjected to over countless
years, one intended to paint Israel, that democratic outpost of
Western civilization surrounded by barbarian hordes intent on its
destruction, as perennial victim.

But as in the past, so as now, it is a lie.

The truth is the current conflict has little if anything to do
with Hamas or its rockets. It does however have everything to do
with the state of Israel’s decades-long policy of occupation,
embargo, siege, collective punishment, expropriation, ethnic
cleansing and apartheid. Israel’s war is not with Hamas but with
the Palestinian people in their entirety, both the 1.5 million in
Gaza and the 3 million in the West Bank. It is a war waged every
hour of every day there is occupation, checkpoints, and
settlements. It is a war waged every hour of every day there is
an economic embargo, siege, and collective punishment. It is a
war being waged every second of the indignity and humiliation
suffered by its victims.

Yet despite the irrefutable facts of Israel’s barbaric treatment
of a people criminalized for daring to exist, we are treated to a
constant inversion of the truth, which holds that the many and
multiple depredations being suffered by the Palestinians do not
amount to one of the most sustained and grievous crimes against
humanity in history, but are the result of their intransigence
and violence. This is the song of colonialism. The victims always
bring it on themselves. If only they would learn to bear their
chains in silence. As Golda Meir said, “We cannot forgive
them for forcing us to kill their children.”
And they are killing them, right now, while the world looks on –
again.

Worse, when we consider that Israel’s treatment of the
Palestinian people constitutes a clear and inarguable breach of
international law, and has done for decades, the Western media’s
continuing policy of ascribing a moral equivalence between
Israel, an oppressive settler colonial state, and the
Palestinians, an oppressed colonized and besieged people,
monumental insult is added to monstrous injury. There is no moral
equivalence. Nor could there ever be one.

A concerted attempt is underway to break any attempt at unity
between Fatah and Hamas, after the Netanyahu government incited
and whipped up hatred against the Palestinians over the recent
abduction and killing of three Israeli teenagers after they left
an illegal settlement near Hebron to hitchhike back to Israel
proper. Their deaths have been exploited to prosecute an agenda
of keeping the Palestinians divided. It won’t work. Oppression
does not divide it unites its victims, and Israel deludes itself
if it believes it can break a people whose will to resist has
proved unbreakable time and again. That said, resistance is not a
game nor is it romantic or glorious. The trauma being suffered by
children, old people, and everyone forced to live under the
shells and missiles being rained down on them will be
unimaginable. The fear as the tanks gather at Gaza’s border and
the troops prepare to invade will be immeasurable.

There is no point in deluding ourselves that anything approaching
a resolution is anywhere in sight, not with a supine
administration in Washington which, if it so desired, could end
this barbarity with one phone call. All we can say with certainty
at this moment is that incinerating Palestinian children in the
name of civilization and democracy renders both meaningless.

The bombing of Guernica in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War by
Nazi bombers on behalf of General Franco's fascist forces has
endured as a symbol of barbarism, when innocent civilians for the
first time in Europe were attacked by the military might of an
advanced industrialised nation. A reproduction of Picasso's
famous painting of this war crime hangs pride of place within UN
headquarters in New York to this day.

How ironic then that the same UN demonstrates nothing but
impotence in the face of Israel's bombing of Gaza, which at time
of writing has killed 170 people and injured hundreds more, the
vast majority civilians and 40 of those killed children.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.